


what once was

by jugheadjones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Childhood Memories, claire needs to stop inspiring me to write when i have other stuff to do, dadding, gas station slushies, just some good to counteract the sad, really a mess, self indulgent noise, southside high
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-29 02:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12621236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: childhood is like a knife stuck in your throat, they say. it can't be easily removed.jughead doesn't go to school five minutes away anymore, but he still comes by the andrews house a lot. he and archie have been part of each other for so long that it's easier to be friends than not to be. fred's home from the hospital and they're all learning to walk again. some days it comes easier than others.





	what once was

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohmygodwhy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/gifts).



> you can blame ohmygodwhy for this self-indulgent mess, i just read chapter two of "the sum of our parts" and it made me write this 
> 
> that "childhood is a knife" quote actually comes from a canadian film by the director of Arrival that's well worth a watch - it's called Incendies

Archie asks on Friday if Jughead wants to come over for a sleepover. Jughead says he’ll ask his foster parents, which is a laugh, because he’s living in his dad’s trailer alone and there’s no one to miss him. Maybe a lamp. But Archie had asked with a quiet kind of desperation, so Jughead texts him later and tells him they said yes. Archie lets him have the bed, which Jughead thinks is an apology for the whole _gang war_ thing, and he takes it gladly. He’s been keeping the heating low in the trailer because of the electricity bills, and Archie’s bed is very soft and very warm.

When he slumps down the stairs the next morning in pyjamas, it’s to the sound of Fred singing to himself in the kitchen, something about whiskey and rye that Jughead recognizes but doesn’t know. Fred doesn’t notice him for awhile, one crutch tucked under his armpit, his back turned to Jughead, attention focused on slicing a new container of strawberries. When Jughead sits down, Fred glances hurriedly over his shoulder and smiles warmly. He doesn’t stop singing, but shoves a couple full strawberries in his mouth so he’s singing with his mouth full. It gets a laugh out of Jughead, which was what Fred was going for. Fred’s always had a knack for making him laugh when he wants to cry.

“They’re good,” he says to Jughead, swallowing. “You want one?”

“Sure.”

Jughead knows a kid at school who can’t eat strawberries because of a food allergy. The rest of the serpents are protective of him, and give a death glare to anyone who’s idiot enough to unpack some near their table. Jughead hasn’t seen a strawberry since. The guy’s cool about it, keeps an epipen stowed in the pocket of his leather jacket. No one in Jughead’s family is allergic to anything - with how much he enjoys eating, he can’t think of a worse fate - but they’d learned how to administer an epipen in grade nine gym class, and Jughead recognizes it anyway.

The spring after FP lost his job, in the shuffle of winter coats being replaced by spring ones, one of those very same clear-and-orange pens had found itself a top shelf in the Jones’ living room alongside a bunch of other crap. FP had scowled when Gladys had pointed it out.

“Freddie Andrews is allergic to pineapple,” he’d said with a snort. “Guess I should give that back to him some day.”

He hadn’t: the epipen had sat around on their counter for the rest of the year, and then another year, until someone had finally tossed it. Jughead assumes they expire, but isn’t sure. He’s never seen Fred with one, but assumes he keeps them around, maybe in his work desk, or up in his bedroom. Fred can be stubborn, but he’s not reckless. Not with his life, not when Archie’s around, for sure. Fred pops another strawberry in his mouth and offers Jughead the plate.

Jughead takes the plate out of his hands, even if it’s plastic and it won’t break if it’s dropped. Fred’s been doing a lot of dropping lately: his hands shake a lot. “Need to drink more OJ,” he always says if he catches Jughead looking, like low blood sugar is the worst of his problems. Fred goes to the fridge now and gets it out, moving toward the cupboard for a glass.

“I can get that-”

“I got, it Jug.” Fred reaches down a stack of small, colourful plastic cups. Jughead recognizes them: they’re the juice glasses he remembers from his childhood, the ones he and Archie used to use when they made ill-attended lemonade stands in the front yard.

“You still have those?”

“Yeah,” says Fred, “They’ve just been moved up a shelf. Do you want the yellow one?”

Yellow was Jughead’s colour, always, because Archie had laid permanent dibs to red. Jughead’s oddly touched that he remembers. Fred takes it down and fills it with juice for him. Takes the green one for himself, because that was the one he always took. Parents got the least coveted colours.

“Fred?” asks Jughead.

Fred swallows a gulp of orange juice from his reassuringly non-breakable cup. “What’s up?”

“Can I do anything for you?”

Fred smiles, but looks confused. “Pardon?”

“Like, is there anything I can do to help. Anything at all.”

“You do so much for me already,” says Fred, with a smile.

“I don’t really.”

“Sure you do. You make us dinner all the time. You keep me company. You brought me these.” He thumps his hand against one of the crutches. “I hate them, but they make walking easier.

“Okay,” says Jughead, troubled, and takes a tiny sip of his glass. “But you’ll let me know?”

“Of course,” says Fred, and smiles, even though Jughead knows he’s not telling the truth. "You thanked your friend for me, right?" 

"Who?"

"The one who lent you the crutches." 

"Oh," says Jughead. "Yeah. I did." 

* * *

Archie dips one of his four chicken nuggets in his honey dipping sauce, licks it, and then pops the thing whole in his mouth. They’re sitting in a McDonalds after school, halfway between Southside and Riverdale High. Archie’s paid for everything because he has a crisp green ten dollar bill from Fred, and Jughead just has a handful of gummy pocket change. Never mind that that crisp ten was most probably Fred’s last. They’re friends again, but things are still shaky. Things are still off.

“I never told you,” he begins, with the faux-offhanded nonchalance of someone who has been rehearsing this phrase a thousand times in his head throughout this social interaction. “A few months ago, back before we found out that Clifford - you know, my dad had a panic attack.”

Jughead goes quiet with his burger halfway to his mouth. His arms feel suddenly heavy and cold. “What do you mean?”

“Like, a panic attack. Hyperventilating and stuff.”

“I know what it is, Archie.”

“Okay, well- yeah.” Archie pushes his container of dipping sauce around his plate. “He said there was just so much going on. And he was really scared for me. So he-”

Archie swallows, and it looks like it hurts. “I'm worried he's getting like that again. It was in his bedroom. I had to just - hold onto him and be like, ‘it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re okay. I’m okay.’” He swallows again, his throat convulsing. Jughead worries for a moment that he’s going to cry, but then his face settles back into calm. “He wouldn't stop apologizing to me after, and I kept wanting to tell him it’s not your fault, you know? It’s fine. But I didn't know what to say.”

Archie stabs his last piece of chicken hard into the container. “Fucked up,” he says softly, conclusively.

“Yeah,” Jughead echoes him, instead of all the other things he wants to say. “Fucked up.”

* * *

Archie and Fred act like college roommates again. Jughead walks in on them once tossing a round object back and forth in the kitchen: not just tossing, but whipping it, like they’re trying to make each other mess up.

“Stop!” He has to yell, feeling a lot like Mary must have before she left. There’s a lot of glassware in between the two of them, and the last thing they need is broken glass on the floor. Fred gets one last good throw in - a perfect, one handed snap of the wrist - and then looks immediately guilty because he’s supposed to be the adult and know better. Archie catches the apple in both hands and holds it.

“Archie started it,” says Fred immediately. “He threw it at me.”

“Well, I’m ending it,” says Jughead, and sees Fred crack a little smile at his tone. He re-arranges his face immediately into an expression of apology, and lets Archie cross the room to hand him the apple.

“Sorry,” says Fred, tucking the apple back into the fruit bowl, now slightly bruised. “We’re done. I swear.”

They keep it up, though. Archie’s lying on the floor on his side the next evening, absently tapping at the screen of his phone. Jughead’s on the couch with his homework balanced on his knees. Archie’s never been one for sitting properly on beds or couches: if he can't be up high he wants to be down low. The floor is Archie’s domain, or, failing that, the kitchen counter. Fred comes along and lays on top of him and steamrollers him into the rug.

“Get off me!” yells Archie, pretending to be annoyed without meaning it. “Get off!”

Archie’s big and strong now, and could probably throw him off. But he doesn’t. Fred laughs and props his elbows on Archie’s head, squishing him into the floor.

“You can’t get up now,” says Archie, his voice muffled by Fred’s weight. “Didn’t think this through, did you, old man?”

“Jug’ll help me up,” says Fred and reaches a hand out for Jughead, his balance wavering slightly. Jughead sets his book aside and quickly gets up off the couch to help him.

Jughead wants to tell Fred he shouldn’t roughhouse like that, at least until he’s healed up a bit more. Maybe at least until he stops breaking juice glasses. It’s the same way he used to want to tell his dad that he shouldn’t drive after that last beer. But he’d always held his tongue then, and he holds it now. No longer because he believes that adults know any better than him, but maybe because he wants to believe things will be all right regardless.

Archie grabs Fred in a pretend wrestling chokehold once he’s up. Fred makes fake choking noises to humour him, and Jughead wonders why guys always have to bond by pretending like they’re killing each other.

Then again, he’s in a gang now. So maybe he shouldn’t be one to judge.

* * *

“I look like a bum,” says Fred one day, examining his unwashed, unbrushed hair in front of the mirror.

“You just got shot, no one’s expecting you to look like a magazine cover.”

Fred cracks a smile at that. “I don’t know. Would you want to bring your girlfriend home if your dad was dressed like this all the time?”

“My dad always dresses like that.”

“Okay, but FP always looks good,” says Fred. Jughead holds onto that for a bit. Thinks about Toni saying: _“you’re not that straight, are you?”_ Decides to let it go.

“Maybe you need a haircut,” says Jughead, as Archie sidles into the room, a football tucked under his arm. He’s thinking about the barbershop on the Southside. He’d gone there with Toni and Fangs after school yesterday because Fangs wanted a trim. All the serpents got their hair cut there. The owner was a close friend of FP’s, and the whole place was immaculately well-kept and smelled comfortingly of soap. It’s a world and a half away from where Fred used to take Archie for haircuts, the kind of place where they let you sit in plastic rocketships and you get a sucker after, but it’s comforting in the same way. Like the place is friendly. FP used to get his hair cut there when he was a kid. The barber guy had asked if Jughead had wanted a cut too, and he’d said maybe. Maybe he’d come back later.

Fred exhales now in a deep sigh, running his hand through his hair. “It’s such a waste of money.”

“I’ll do your hair,” speaks up Archie.

“In your dreams, you will.”

“Come on, I’ve watched mom do it.”

“Not this time, Arch.”

“Chicken,” accuses Archie, and flops onto the couch. Fred swings up one of his crutches and taps him in the back of the head with it.

“I’ll do it myself,” says Fred finally, decisively, and Jughead thinks he’d give just about anything to be able to hand Fred a twenty right now, the way Fred used to press money he didn’t have into their hands when they were headed out with friends, and just not have him worry about this one thing for once.

* * *

Jughead comes by a few days later and finds Fred sitting on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, a towel tied around his neck for a smock.

“Don’t!” Fred is saying, Archie holding a pair of kitchen scissors over his head, a good clump of Fred’s hair in his fist. “Don’t do it, I changed my mind.”

“You said military style, right?” Archie presses the scissors flush against Fred’s head.

“Stop!” Fred’s gaze lands on Jughead. “Jughead, help me. He’s going to butcher my head.”

“Relax, I’ve got it.”

“Be careful.” Archie snips a piece of hair, and Fred screws his eyes shut. “Archie!”

“What!”

“That’s too much!”

“Your eyes are shut, you don’t know how much it is!”

“Just make it even, that’s all I ask.”

Archie frowns. “We’ll see.”

“You’ll see?” Fred catches Jughead’s eye. “Jughead, help.”

“He’ll do fine,” says Jughead reassuringly, with more confidence than he feels.

“Thanks, Jug.” says Archie, carefully measuring two neighbouring strands of Fred’s hair.

“You’d better,” warns Fred. “You’re my firstborn, I don’t want to have to kill you.”

Archie huffs and releases the hair he’s been holding onto. “Do you want me to call someone?”

“Oh, go for it,” says Fred finally. “I have no one to impress.”

* * *

They end up having to get a professional after all, the little shop on Main Street with the dusty red pole. The barber there knows Fred well, and gives him a cut at half price. Fred tips a bit more generously than he can afford.

“Looking sharp, Mr. A.” says Jughead when Fred gets back in the car.

Archie sulks, mostly faking it. “It looked fine before.”

Fred laughs and ruffles Archie’s hair. “Maybe you should go to cosmetology school.”

He asks if there’s anywhere he can drop them, argues that they’ve been spending too much time cooped up with him at home. “You two need to spend time with people your own age,” he says, frowning over the steering wheel. It’s his first time driving in awhile, and sometimes he winces when he has to brake too quickly. But otherwise it’s going good.

“Jughead does,” says Archie, and it’s not an accusation, just a point. “He has friends who do stuff.”

“Like what?” asks Fred, gaze hopeful in the rearview mirror. Jughead does his best not to let him down.

“We get slushies,” says Jughead, thinking about Ricky, how they’d made a date just to go out to the convenience store and try the new flavour. Ricky laughing and getting him napkins when Jughead had pressed too hard and poured slush all over his arm.

“Slushies,” says Fred thoughtfully. “They sound like good friends.”

“They are,” says Jughead, and doesn’t catch Archie’s eye, and then does, boldly. “They really are.”

He's not sure Archie believes him, but at least Fred seems to. 

* * *

Jughead makes grilled cheese sandwiches for the three of them while Archie and Fred are sitting on the rug, cutting out pictures for Archie’s history presentation. Jughead knows the teacher would have accepted a powerpoint - it would have been a lot easier - but this is something for Fred to do. He leans over the posterboard now, holding his mug of hot chocolate easily out of the way so it doesn’t slop onto the photos. His hands still shake, but not quite as much anymore. He glues paper down and relaxes when he can tell it’s even. Archie is pouring over his notes, trying to figure out what he’s going to say tomorrow.

Archie’s not the best with computer software anyway, squints at Microsoft Word like he’s trying to strain his eyes as Jughead is trying to explain to him how to widen the margins. Jughead takes over doing the typing, lets Archie go in shifts to the family printer and rescue the pages he needs.

Jughead leaves for a bit to do dishes and finds Archie giving Fred a neck massage when he gets back. Fred’s on the floor with his back against Archie’s legs, Archie on the couch behind him, rubbing the knots out of his neck. The carpet is covered in paper snow.

“Jughead, you look tense,” says Fred. “Come sit down.”

“I’m okay.”

“Come on,” says Fred, and slaps his hand against his thigh until Jughead does (his good thigh, thank god.) Jughead gives in and sits down between Fred’s legs, carefully moving the kitchen scissors out of the way, resigned to being the reluctant third link in this massage chain.

Fred rubs his hands together to warm them up before he starts gently kneading the back of Jughead’s neck. The massage feels amazing, loosening more pain and tightness in him than he’d thought himself capable of carrying. Fred spreads his hands out to massage Jughead’s shoulders, and Jughead sighs in relief.

“Tell me if I’m being too rough,” says Fred, and then, “Oh, Archie. Right there.”

“You’re not,” says Jughead, and then privately to himself, _I don’t think you could be._

* * *

“What’s that song you sing?” asks Jughead. They’re sitting on the porch with a half-sleeve of graham crackers, looking up at the night sky.

“Which one?”

“The one about good old boys and whiskey and rye.”

Fred grins. “That’s American Pie.”

“Like the movie?”

“Not like the movie. It’s about the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly.”

“Oh.” says Jughead, because it’s a more depressing answer than he expected. But Fred isn’t done.

“I used to sing that to Archie when he was a baby to get him to sleep.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. In the middle of the night. It was the only thing that worked. Mary always wanted me to sing nursery songs.”

Jughead thinks privately that maybe that’s why Archie always loved his dad better.

* * *

He asks Fred on Wednesday if he wants to get slushies. His treat. Fred grins, and says sure, it sounds like a plan. Lets Jughead drive them out to the gas station with the best selection.

At the sticky counter beside the machines, Jughead hesitates between a medium and a small. “Go big or go home,” says Fred, and slams a super-jumbo size cup down on the counter next to him.

“You have to have one too, then.”

“I’m too old for anything above a medium.”

“That sucks.”

Fred laughs. “Yeah, it does.”

Jughead goes straight for the yellow, and then the blue, and then the red. “Creative,” observes Fred, before pumping every single handle and turning the slush in his cup to a disgusting brown.

“Nice colour,” jokes Jughead.

“It used to drive your dad crazy when I did this.” Fred pushes gently on one of the levers, so that the blue that drizzles out is all syrup and no slush. “Now you know why I have to limit myself a medium.”

Fred gets out his replacement wallet at the cash, but Jughead beats him to it, offering the last of the twenty he’d taken out at the bank that morning.

“Jughead!” Fred very gently pushes his hand aside and hands the cashier another bill. The cashier - a pimply junior that Jughead recognizes from Riverdale High- bows to his authority and takes it. “Once you get another part-time job,” Fred promises. “I’ll let you buy me a round.”

“Okay,” says Jughead, wondering when that will be, and if he’ll ever have money to spare once he’s paid the utility bills for the trailer every month. “Deal.”  



End file.
